4. The Couriers
Short and sharp - Just an idea floating in my head. No violence, sex or language… Let's just call it an introduction to something I may expand on later…
The Mojave Express was not exactly what it seemed. But that's not really important right now. What is important is that there were six couriers, there have always been six. It's not like it was some magical number, it's just the way it worked out. They, the couriers that is, were also not exactly as they seemed, they couldn't be when one considered what they could do.
Individually, they were near on indestructible – as demonstrated by Courier Six during the events of the Second Battle of Hoover Dam and the time leading up to it and by Courier Five, known as Ulysses. How he managed to live on was a marvel for the ages. Ulysses had gone rouge but he was still tied to the organisation, weather he liked to admit it or not. The exploits of Five and Six were well documented.
It's not to say that they were immortal… Courier Four, one Daniel Wayand was struck down in his prime while on the same job as Courier Six. His death was an anomaly but he was about to be replaced so no real harm was done.
That job had been… unusual… and though he lived on, Six was rendered amnesiac. So much so, that he even forgot his own name. It was worrying to the Mojave Express, but enough about that for now.
Courier Three, was a deceptively small young woman. She had a name, she chose not to use it. She travelled the roads outside of the Mojave, spending most of her time in California. People, ordinary people, were often surprised that the diminutive lady travelled alone, unmolested. Raiders, Ferals, Supermutants and the rest of the ferocious animals and beings that haunted the contemporary wasteland gave her a wide berth as she strode steely eyed on her path.
Courier Two, was an unassuming looking man. He went by the name of Ross Green. He was resourceful. He was also an unparalleled genius. He was the type of man who could flick through a book and then recite it back to you five years later word for word… he would even to special voices for each character if that was your thing. Give him access to a place like Big MT and after a day he would have that shit locked down. He could cure the whole wasteland of its ills… the problem though, was that he was totally apathetic.
And then there was Courier One… Yeah, about that one… He was still alive, they knew he was still alive but he had fallen off the grid. One, or as he was normally known, Morgan Bateman, was wild card, more so than any of the others. While he fulfilled his duties as a courier… most of the time… he was also unpredictable and not exactly stable. He tended to disappear for long periods without warning. The only people he would respond to in any kind of familiar, if not friendly light, were the other couriers and the old man, Johnson Nash.
Johnson Nash, the operator of the Mojave Express Depot in Primm was also not what he seemed. He exuded an air of down-home, country bumpkin. He was shacked up with his Mrs and living cushy in the Express office but he oversaw the operation. He sorted and handed out the jobs, assigning them to the most likely candidate. He had always been there, as long as anyone could remember. He knew what the Express was all about, though he never let on.
The Mojave Express was not the only courier agency in the wastes… but it was the first and it was the best, the others were merely shadows in comparison. They were full of ordinary people, ordinary postal workers and some spies working for various factions. Little people leading little lives… There were none like the Mojave Express.
Now, there was a reason that the couriers were almost never seen in each others company… certainly never all together. Individually they were near on indestructible. All together, they were an Army.
All together, if inclined to do so, they could lay waste to any that came before them…
… So, when Courier Six strode into the saloon at Goodsprings, his best girl on his arm and his best friend at his back and saw a table filled with four chillingly familiar people and one he did not know but he could guess her identity, his heart froze in his chest…
All six couriers from the Mojave Express were in the same place at the same time and that did not bode well for anyone.
The Mojave Express was not what it seemed…